Check out the continued fine work by Jim Crowhurst in ranking the top athletes in Redwood Empire history. Take note of the distance runners from that region which includes Julia Stamps, Sara Bei, Jenny Aldridge and at the #6 spot, Kim Conley who is on quite a roll. If you are wondering why no Amber Trotter, she needed a 2:23.40 to qualify and so far, no such an 800 time has been found for her.
http://running.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/girls-redwood-empire-all-around/
http://running.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/girls-redwood-empire-all-around/
8 comments:
Any high school girl's distance list, even a National one, that doesn't include Amber Trotter isn't very credible.
And I'm not even a Sonoma County resident. I live in Santa Cruz County.
I'm sure she has an 800 split during a 1600 that would qualify her.
Why is 800 considered distance?
I think she won Footlocker (Kinney?) Nationals by 45 seconds in 2001 or 2002. And she's not included on her County's all time girl's distance list?
The criteria is flawed.
Um, the lists are based on Track results, not XC. The 800, 1600 and 3200 are considered the distance events in CA HS track. Amber is third all time in the empire at 3200, but had a best in the 1600 of 'only' 5:10, which is 36th empire all-time. These are the combined lists after all, and I am sure she is close to making it, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.
Amber made the list for the 1600/3200 combined.
5:10.24..(463) 10:20.74..(627) 1090 Amber Trotter, Ukiah 2002
And no, the split of 2:35 from the 5:10 1600 would not get her on to the 800/1600/3200 list.
According to the calculator on the www.mcmillanrunning.com site, a 10:20 2 mile is "equivalent" to a 4:52 mile and a 2:11 800m. (I think somewhere on the site McMillan provides a better, more precise explanation of "equivalent" but essentially if you can run a certain time at a give distance, you can, all things considered, also run the "equivalent" time for another distance.) While 5:10 may be the best available mark that can be found for Amber Trotter's past high school performances, I think she was very capable of the 4:52 and 2:11 marks. Just sayin'...
We can also speculate that Kim Conley could have run faster in high school based on what she is running now.
I think what is posted now is fair based on what those runners accomplished during their high school careers.
"I think somewhere on the site McMillan provides a better, more precise explanation of "equivalent" but essentially if you can run a certain time at a give distance, you can, all things considered, also run the "equivalent" time for another distance."
That is not entirely correct. According to the McMillan website: "The Calculator Race Times indicate what you could run for various distances if you are properly trained for that distance. In other words, a runner who is optimally trained for a 5K would have to perform proper marathon training in order to expect to run the predicted marathon time. And, the farther apart the distances, the less accurate the Race Times may be. That is to say that a half-marathon performance is a better predictor of your marathon time than is a mile performance."
Note the phrase, "optimally trained". And although mile and 2 mile performance limits are reasonably correlated (especially for better trained runners), predicting 800 ability from a 2 mile PR (or the other way around)is a crapshoot.
In regards to Amber Trotter and the McMillan conversions: someone mentioned that that calculations depend on the athlete being properly trained for the distance.
For example if your 5K time indicates a certain marathon time you need to have the necessary mileage to accomplish that equivalent performance.
It seems that converting to a shorter distance, like 3200 to 800, wouldn't necessarily require much of a change in training.
The exception being a runner who possesses poor leg speed.
I am not a coach. I'm sure there are a lot of coaches with a better perspective.
All I know is that I saw Amber Trotter run a cross country race in Golden Gate Park around 2001.
( A meet that attracted top teams from Utah, New York, New Mexico, Washington etc. The National Running Festival(?) which started in North Carolina)
She dominated!
Re: "And although mile and 2 mile performance limits are reasonably correlated (especially for better trained runners), predicting 800 ability from a 2 mile PR (or the other way around)is a crapshoot."
I dunno. I plugged in my PR for the 3200 and the "equivalent" times it calculated for the 800 and 1600 were pretty spot on for my PRs at those distances. Have you tried it with your own PR for a single distance and seen how well it worked for you?
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